Thursday, August 30, 2012

We met the Levy Family on Siesta Key Wednesday night for a beach portrait session. After rescheduling from Tuesday night due to some rain on the tail end of Hurricane Isaac, we were glad to have good weather! Their twin boys were a lot of fun and had some great expressions!

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

We met the Wood/Strittmater Family at Sea Club V on Siesta Key a week or so ago.

Mother Nature has certainly not been our friend this summer! A gloomy sky and windy conditions made this shoot a challenge - not our first in recent months and not our last for sure! (In fact, instead of blogging right now, we should be at Siesta Key shooting another family portrait! We had to reschedule due to stormy weather caused by Hurricane Isaac!)

Despite less than ideal weather, we were still able to capture some beautiful memories for this family!

We're always happy to come straight to your beach house or condo if you are staying somewhere on the beach, so please contact us today to book your family beach portrait session! If there is bad weather during your visit to Siesta Key or another local beach, we are happy to reschedule for an alternate date or, if rescheduling is not possible, we always offer a full refund when the weather does not cooperate.

Tuesday, August 21, 2012

One question we are often asked by potential beach portrait customers is, "Will you retouch our photos?" The short answer is, "Yes, but not until you place an order." Read on for a more detailed explanation!

We can control a lot of things when we get ready to take photos - lighting and posing for example. Unfortunately, we can't always control what is going on behind our subjects. Sarasota and the surrounding areas are home to many beautiful photo locations. These locations are also favorite "hot spots" for tourists and locals alike to enjoy the sun, sand, and tropical greenery of the area. Therefore, there are often people, boats, or other distractions in the background of an otherwise nice photo.

Another thing we cannot control is the weather. In cases of bad weather, we do our best to reschedule the shoot (and if we can't, we refund your money in full). However, sometimes there are weather conditions that might not warrant rescheduling or canceling, but can cause hair or clothing to be out of place in photos.

We can solve most of these problems through retouching. When we do a photoshoot, we often take hundreds of photos. It would be very tedious and time consuming for us to edit every single photo to remove the family enjoying the beach in the background of your family portrait! But, obviously, you don't want them in the background of the enlargement hanging your living room.

Our solution: "Proof Delay"

When you order prints from our website, there is a "proof delay" that occurs behind the scenes. During this time, we view your order online and see which prints you have selected. We then retouch only those photos that you have ordered, make sure they look "just right," and re-upload them to the online album so they can replace the non-retouched photos that were there before. You can view the retouched photos online as soon as we complete the order, so you'll be able to see the changes. We allow ourselves 7 business days for this delay, but if we finish early (as we almost always do) we'll send your order on its way ASAP. If you want to see the changes before we finalize the order, we are happy to make that happen - just let us know!

Some of the standard things we do to every photo you order include: reducing shine, imperfections, or redness from faces/skin, removing distracting items from the background or foreground, and removing stray or windblown hairs. If there are other specific items you want us to try to fix or remove, it is best to email us right away with your requests! We process orders quickly and we don't want to miss something that is important to you! Also, we use a professional retouching service (Retouchup.com) for tricky items that we can't do ourselves, so we need to know exactly what you want done when we submit the photos to them.

Important note: the bigger the print, the more detailed retouching we'll do for you... i.e. a 4x6 won't get as much attention as something really big, because you won't be able to see the detail in a small print anyway...

Here are a few examples of the retouching work that is included for free with our photography pacakges. (Roll your mouse over the images to see the "before" photos.)

Friday, August 10, 2012

We met the Kiley Family on Siesta Key Wednesday night for a beach portrait session. We had a lot of fun with their four kids, especially their two year old daughter. She was certainly the easiest two year old we've photographed in a long time!

Since we lost our usual spot to Tropical Storm Debby a few weeks ago, we've been scouting for new photo locations on Siesta Key. The spot we used last night is right at the northern end of the main public beach, and it has gorgeous sea oats for family portraits! We're not crazy about the parking situation, the walk, or the number of people on the beach in this area though, so we'll still be on the lookout for other locations as time goes by. And we're always happy to come straight to your beach house or condo if you are staying somewhere on the beach.